Every single morning I wake with a bang,' he said. 'It's as though the fact that I am alive is injected into me; I am a character in a fairytale, bursting with life. Jostein Gaarder More Quotes by Jostein Gaarder More Quotes From Jostein Gaarder There is always Joker to see through the delusion. Generation succeeds generation, but there is a fool walking the earth who is never ravaged by time. Jostein Gaarder fool generations earth Where both reason and experience fall short, there occurs a vacuum that can be filled by faith. Jostein Gaarder vacuums reason fall Ladies and Gentlemen...we are floating in Space! Jostein Gaarder floating gentleman space The rearing of children is considered too important to be left to the individual and should be the responsibility of the state. Jostein Gaarder important responsibility children But all fairytales have rules, and perhaps it’s their rules that actually distinguish one fairytale from the other. These rules never need to be understood. They only need to be followed. If not, what they promise won’t come true. Jostein Gaarder fairytale promise needs All beauty that surrounds us must one day perish. Jostein Gaarder surround one-day Some are more equal than others. Jostein Gaarder equal Life consists of a long chain of coincidences. Jostein Gaarder chains coincidence long Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don't think, you're not really a human. Jostein Gaarder problem animal thinking ...long before the child learns to talk properly-and long before it learns to think philosophically-the world will have become a habit. A pity, if you ask me. Jostein Gaarder long children thinking When you realize there is something you don't understand, then you're generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things. Jostein Gaarder understanding path philosophy If we don't know where we are going, it can be helpful to know where we come from. Jostein Gaarder where-we-come helpful knows It takes billions of years to create a human being. And it takes only a few seconds to die. Jostein Gaarder billions philosophical years If just one of [those people] experiences life as a crazy adventure--and I mean that he, or she, experiences this every single day... Then he or she is a joker in a pack of cards. Jostein Gaarder crazy adventure mean As a Roman philosopher, Cicero, said of him a few hundred years later, Socrates 'called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil. Jostein Gaarder home philosophy years a sensation is always the same as a piece of news, and a piece of news never lives long. Jostein Gaarder news pieces long We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism. Jostein Gaarder racism stupid believe The stupidest thing she knew was for people to act like they knew all about the things they knew absolutely nothing about. Jostein Gaarder absolutely-nothing stupidest people Life is like a huge lottery in which only the winning tickets are visible. Jostein Gaarder tickets life-is-like winning History is one long chain of reflections. Hegel also indicated certain rules that apply for this chain of reflections. Anyone studying history in depth will observe that a thought is usually proposed on the basis of other, previously proposed thoughts. But as soon as one thought is proposed, it will be contradicted by another. A tension arises between these two opposite ways of thinking. But the tension is resolved by the proposal of a third thought which accommodates the best of both points of view. Hegel calls this a dialectic process Jostein Gaarder reflection views thinking
